Happiness by the Kill [Nazomi/Maya]

            Steam touched his lips, heat swelled through the sweet smell. Another cube of sugar submerged beneath the surface, broken to bits by the silver spoon that followed it. It was the little things like that which made it so relaxing. It served other purposes, of course, but it was the habit that much it so relaxing. Enough that Nazomi could sip from the cup, breath in the manufactured office air, and still be content enough to watch the world on the other side of the glass.

            It was as close to being inspired as a sprawling city could bring him anymore without dazzling lights, people, or over-saturating his senses to the point of suffocation. Such things were the birth of a mad creation, quick to spill upon the canvas and eager to breath life then fade. They were brief moments of happiness captured in the life that had whispered in his ear like a muse. Worth creating but lesser each time they were looked upon. There were no names, only the place in which they had happened. Places, things that would change soon enough leaving him only the painting he had created in tribute. Eventually they would only be a reminder of those times for which he longed and the emptiness they had left behind.

            But through the glass he could see the sky. Not choked by towers or noise but the blue skies that turned, gold, white, red, grey, and black as they had always done since long before he had ever known breath as a little lamb. He could watch the sun and the moon without obstruction, feel the heat from the light that he was so often denied on the streets and in the shadows of the modern world.

            But the sun never felt as warm through glass.

            Or maybe it was the sun never shined as brightly for him as it did for others.

            By god how he wanted it to, though.

            That thought would lead where it always did. Back to eyes he no longer wished to look upon and the question of his faith, as awkward a word as it was for him to use. It was, however, the only one that fit. A faith without angels choking on their halos or an empty throne abdicated by disappointed creator. But of voices, blood, and unspeakable efforts that he had once hoped would leave those that he encountered better for the tragedy. Once he would have happily played the Devil, wicked and cruel, if only to drag them from entropy of the world and the weaknesses that their existence had forced upon them.

            And now?

            Conflict rather than surety over his every action. Even his brushstrokes suffered at his uncertainty. And the great works he had once hoped to leave behind crumbled with strangling hesitation.

            Tumblers and locks unsnapped, springs and sockets slipped out of place. Nazomi let out the thought he had struggled to wrestle back down. He'd never been whole. That much was simply a part of his existence. But he had been free. Or at least felt it. That had probably been nothing but another lie as well. Not one thing he had done had ever come close to accomplishing his goals, it merely destroyed one life after the next in the pretense that he had somehow helped save them from the drudgery of their existence. It was one elaborate lie that had felt as truth, being nothing more than the impulses of a monster that had hoped to be more than it was. A lie told to himself that was a deeper betrayal than any other had ever visited upon him.

            Before he could linger on that horror any longer there came a sound he was familiar with. Screams. Screams and the loud rapport of gunfire coming from one of the floors above or below muffled only by the distance. In spite of himself or the dark thoughts that lorded over him, something the arrancar was quick to remind himself only happened when left to his own devices, he turned a curious glance towards the door. There was more to it than the thankful distraction from the banality that the Arrancar had needed.

            There was pressure behind it that he could feel pressing against his own. Someone with power. A presence naked, raw, writhing, and inviting that trickled into his senses like water through a sieve. He could taste it on his lips, smell it in the air, knew it with the same familiarity that he did he flavor of tea he drank.

            He finished his cup, put on his hat, straightened his clothing, and stalked out onto the floor.

            And found the most beautiful chaos by following it.

            Shards of something that smelled faintly of ink and metal flew by his head. Spurs of paper stuck to the wall, obscenities scattered between the shredded pages when the spines flitted closely enough together for him to read them. Flung from a modern convenience that had taken on life it was not meant to have; broken plastic from its' body making out the brief outline of a porcupine or what someone might imagine them to be imprinted upon it. Symmetrical metal teeth whirred in his direction before a poor little lamb drew its' attention with a scream and it wobbled off with paper quills flicking up solidly, likely with lethal intentions.

            Just as it waddled out of view a man came breathlessly streaking by, taking no notice of the Arrancar. The man tripped, rolling into a desk with a heavy enough thud it almost covered up the plastic and metallic clanking that followed behind. Nazomi stepped to the side allowing an industrial sized copy machine with scramble by, the whirring sound of the copier going off instead of a roar as it tackled the man just as he got to his feet. Glass shattered, the both of them disappearing below the full length window's ledge with that sound still frantically whirring beneath the screams of the prey it had caught.

            The rest of the floor was no different. A dozen different office supplies had risen up to attack their users as if the world had suddenly erupted in a fit of rage at the predictability of their lives. Walking amongst the disorder Nazomi smiled at the various creative ways they had twisted into forms they should not have, the intelligence that seemed to be directing them. Bits of wood flew by in shapes that made him think of bats, one of them all but colliding with his face before he snatched it out of the air. Gentle enough not to break it he held on, taking in the details with which it writhed in his hand.

            It could only be her.

            The building twisted and turned as he rushed deeper into it to find her, following the scent of her power the whole way. It was everywhere, the creatures she had called into being scattered about so widely it made finding her amongst them a nightmare. So he went to where it was strongest, finding not her but the work she had left behind with a tell-tale trail.

            And looking at what she had created left him speechless.

            But smiling.

            Blue bled into gold but his imagination filled in the gaps that the lingering traces of her power painted into being. Fingers lazily tracing upon the wall, feet bared on the table's surface, hips rolling as she walked. Again, a goddess, a muse, standing center stage for a tragic audience that would never really be able to appreciate her the same way Nazomi did. And she had done it while the room itself tore them apart, danced as their blood painted every surface. Eerily close to what he had once envisioned, what he had once put to canvas because it had wormed its way so deeply into his brain he had no other choice.

            Whatever his truth was, this was the closest he had ever felt to knowing someone that might understand him finally.

            All without having really spoken to her.

            He followed fleeing footprints that had bathed the carpet crimson with her every step. Sprinting, running, a heart he didn't have suddenly leaping in his chest as he blurred past the failing creations that crumbled into debris. Only the path she had laid out for him had mattered.

            And he tore through whatever stood in his way to her.

            At the end of his search she sat upon the building's steps, bored or absent from the worry of all she had done. Wearing the hat he had left upon her stage. For whatever reason that had pleased him more than anything else; that she had been fond enough of a parting gift to keep it with her even after the time that had passed.

            "It looks good on you." Quiet words for the occasion but no less true for it. Nazomi took a seat at her side, arms resting across his lap as he bent forward to get a better look at her face. A genuine smile flashed across his features, his eyes pinched together as he chuckled. All that eagerness to find her and yet he couldn't think of the first thing to say. Nothing that would matter at least.

            "And here I thought I was a fan before." Cocking his head slightly Nazomi rubbed his eyes, bleary and beaten but so curious still. He reached out, fingers curling back in hesitation and his hand freezing in place. She could be everything he had desired to find, to create, without ever having been involved in how she became that way. Before he had waited, pulled away in hopes for a moment like this one. It hadn't been right at the time. Not the right time, not the right stage. For that patience he had been rewarded with a glimpse into the sort of creature she truly was.

            And she was magnificent.

            "Are you real?" A hint of desperation crept into his voice as his fingers drifted underneath her chin, fingertips pressing gently to her skin. Warmth. She was warm and glowing brighter than the world around her. She smelled like dirt and blood but they fit her so well. Drawing back his hand the Arrancar turned his sight back to the city surrounding them, a vision consuming him, making him deaf to everything but The Pilgrimess. The corners of his lips twitched in understanding.

            A razor-wire grin shined on his face.

            He said the words without thinking.

            "Because I've been looking for someone like you for a very, very long time."

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Word Count: 1771

GP Gained: 35

There was something in this harsh world that called to her, with its concrete and asphalt. When water fell here, it lay heavy. It pooled in rivulets and darkened the grey but was never absorbed, disappeared below metal, pooled underground along with the rest of this not-nature's refuse. Nothing was absorbed. Nothing was green. Nothing grew. There was just the grey and the noise and the blue of the sky.

It felt detached, and soulless. It was the right place for her to be.

She fit right in, almost camouflaged, a harsh grey gargoyle sitting on the step. If you ignored the trails of red that led to her, the stray spikes of vibrant blonde beneath the grey felt hat. She'd got it secondhand, but it fit with the ensemble. She'd been instructed to dress the part, after all, and it was the only hat she had, but something as incongruous as her can't be hidden by something as simple as clothing, as the world.

It's not opposites that attract.

He was beside her and she could hear his smile, and almost every other time she'd be smiling back. She was almost always happy; or would be, in a second, if what she'd been doing was getting dull. Happiness wasn't hard to find in her world of nighttime passion, of people with interchangeable faces and mayfly lives. She did anything she wanted and it was close to everything she wanted as she could ever have, hiding a broken soul with a patchwork of ecstasy.

But today she'd betrayed herself.

"Thanks," she said quietly, but didn't turn around. She didn't want to look at anyone right now, not until the screams faded from her mind. She felt his hand on her shoulder but she didn't turn, not until his fingers slipped further, caressed her neck, felt her breathe and waited for her voice.

She turned but didn't see him, looked past him, through him, thinking only of the room, only of the screams, how they wouldn't stop screaming even after they died, how she killed them again and again and again until there was nothing left. As she was ordered. So obedient. This was the first she'd felt regret.

"Am I what?"

She would have saved them once.

In the distance, sirens began to shriek.

"No one is real."
 
Words: 388
GP: 7

            Glassy eyes that didn't seem to notice him turned his way, her answer both filling him with rapture and despair. That look was not one that went by unknown. Nazomi had worn it more than once, felt the confusion that came with fighting one's self. More recently than ever before. She had pulled him from one such instance by accident if nothing else, perhaps he owed it to her to attempt the same. So the Arrancar smiled like a snake, curved grin stretching farther than it should as he touched the brim of his hat. Plucking it from atop the perch on his head he held it out, the very edge he touched pinched between his fingers at first.

            "A curious answer. I exist, because I do feel that I am real. Maybe I'm not." A soft sound slipped out, not quite a chuckle but close enough to draw some satisfaction from it. The hat wiggled, wobbled, wavered, and waggled as he balanced the brim upon a fingertip. It did so only because he desired it to. And because he desired it to it simply burst in a small bubble of blue light that lit her face in the most spectacular way.

            "So if I'm real because I believe it so, then you are if you believe it to be the truth. Or because I do. But I would rather it be the former. Allowing another to define your existence is nothing but slavery." He paused, holding his hand over his head and willing the reishi back together. In much the same way it had burst the energy compressed and imploded, popping the hat back atop his head as if it had never disappeared to begin with. His attention slipped away, back to the pavement and the throbbing thoughts that pressed against his skull. Why? Why did this bother him?

            "Either we are the products of someone else's needs or the author of our own dying dreams. I hold favor with the latter. For at least I know then that I performed for the only audience that mattered." He sprang from where he sat onto his hands, walking on his palms for no reason other than he could. A twist of his body and his feet snapped back to the ground, with them a curt bow in her direction and a puzzled finger pressed to his own chin. Curiouser and curiouser. Theatrics aside, it was nice to see his own confidence returning. But they weren't the words. Not yet, not yet. Sung in his heart and stuck in his throat as it seemed to be.

            "But that's so serious sounding. Finally, I found you again, perfect and free but hiding that radiance behind a mask of troubles." The Arrancar's tongue clicked against his teeth. Troublesome. So very troublesome. Not her but the unfortunate circumstances that he had found her in. Surely there was something he could do, to prod out of her that magnificence she had once showed upon the stage. But noise, damnedable noise, tore Nazomi's focus from where it should lay. It seemed more and more likely that he'd never be given the chance to share a moment with her without prying eyes, maddening lights, or other little lambs flocking to distract them from one another.

            Today, at least, he found that unacceptable.

            "I do believe-" He spoke with an edge in his voice and wiping his hand across his face with after letting out a huff of frustration. "That I am most definitely going to have to murder someone today. I've looked forward to this for some time, to know the name of my muse. These interruptions will get tiring, quickly." It was just as good a cause as any to pull the flask from the folds of his jacket, a quick pull of sweet wormwood easing some of the violent impulse out of his limbs before he tucked it away again. Looking down at her, as she was, and he felt bitterness for those little lambs around her that drove her to this in their misunderstanding.

            "Will you shine for me, please? All I want is to see you as you are." The ache in his voice carried well, mixed with strained notes of need that lingered in every word. Nazomi turned his hand to her, a ginger motion of twitching fingers held out to help her onto her feet if she so chose to accept it. Whatever it took from him to see it through, to see her as she had appeared once before when cruel hope had rooted itself into his heart and in his head. He knew what was in her better than any other. A splendor that he had once known before, would know again if he could just see it one more time.

            And he would kill everyone if that was what it took to prepare her stage. 

=================================================================

Word Count: 817

GP Gained: 16

GP Total: 51

There were other places she could take her mind. There were good times, still. She hadn't used them up. They were like glass bubbles, floating and delicate, and they popped if she looked too closely. Some were tarnished. Very few were left.

She looked closely at one. It was a memory. Nothing so crude as words, simply a sensation, the way people looked at her on an ordinary day, when she strolled the streets of the sparkling city. She was someone they aspired to. She had their respect, the warmth of it, and for a moment she felt it again.

Then it was forever gone.

There was another bubble in the distance, in a hallowed place; one she tried to never even look at, because the thought of it going away... Even keeping it at such remove, hiding it and hoarding it as a memory of a memory of a memory was better than nothing. Without it she couldn't exist.

It was all she had left of part of her soul. A last conversation. The featherlight sensation of lips against her cheek.

It would tarnish, too, one day.

"Why would I want this to be real?"

A knob was turned on the focus of her gaze, bringing her back to reality, cranking up the size of her smile.

"If it's a dream we're all dreaming then they'll all wake up, won't they? I can't kill a ghost. I didn't kill any ghosts. They're all alive somewhere and their screams are just a detail in someone else's nightmare." The troubled expression fled from her face. "It's like the sun, you know?" As if that made perfect sense.

The hat twirled madly and burst into a riot of color, lighting up her face and revealing an expression of childlike joy. That simple act got her up and moving, covering the distance in a flash, in a blur of herself. She was at him and tugging, giggling madly and pulling, not quite touching his skin, at the cuff of his sleeve.

"I wanna show you something. I wanna get away from here before they come and ruin everything, the blue and white. They don't like it when they find the red. Come on, let's go. Come on, come on, I know a place. There's lights, and music. We can forget. We can dance." The screams in her mind were marring the purity of her smile, but she wasn't losing hope. She could move on from this, like she moved on from everything, even if it wasn't quite like living.

"It's Maya, by the way, and you're one of those things, aren't you? They told me about you. I never quite knew if it was true. What's it like, being a monster? Well, I know. But you're a different kind." He had his own desires, his own needs, if he was what she thought, what the rumors told her. "What's it like, always being that hungry? Does it hurt, having that hole right through you?"

She could ask him questions and dive into the details of it, the essence of him, and not have to remember. She could drown the screams in somebody else's life.

"Let's go, before they get here and ruin it."

If it failed, there were always the pills in her pocket.
 
Words: 551
GP: 11 (18)

            Her fingers on his sleeve, mad smile gracing her features, it would be impossible to deny her anything. She could have led him anywhere and Nazomi would have happily followed in her wake as long as her touch was upon him, the joy wrapping his senses with a narcotic fog. A dancing muse that led him deeper and away, silver sweet words drifting in his thoughts only after they were away from the lights and sirens of mundane mortality that would have intruded upon their perfect moment. Had she not numbed his senses to the desire the Arrancar would have wasted all that potential for just a bit of privacy; even realizing that it might be simpler to slip away instead.

            But why was it he and his muse should be the ones to move?

            That was his bitterness and brandy brown eyes influencing his outrage once again.

            Neither should have been as important as his muse. Yet the doubts he had begun the day with still lingered on in spite of his good fortune. Nazomi managed a smile, a half-hearted thing that looked pleasing in its own feral way. This was as good a place as any to turn his attention back to her, wholly and without question. There was still comfort to be had in that, with thinking only of her or the question that he should have addressed sooner. To think that she knew what he but still didn't shy away from his company only made things that much more enchanting.

            "Suppose I didn't hide it well, did I?" It was not something that came easily, prying her touch from his arm, but still the merry madman managed. He stepped and spun on his feet, pondering how to display the answer best, what could be done to perform for her in the most satisfying way. In that effort Nazomi's smile faltered. Trying to hide the truth of that in the face of her light seemed...unworthy of the attention she had given him. If his muse asked it then he owed her the truth of what he was, no matter how ugly it might be.

            "The hole is simply a reminder. Something so we cannot forget what we are. But the hunger, well that isn't something so simple..." There was light in his eyes, squinting as something that was not him flashed in his irises. But it passed, the dull ache that came with it soothed by shutting them tight as he recalled the first days he spent in the stairwell, that private little hell that had served so well in shaping him. That too dredged up unpleasantness of all sorts, but none he hadn't already revisited recently enough.

            "At first, the hunger is merely another sort of pain. Ever present, worse than others perhaps, but that is all it is. It's like starving. And you're so scared, or angry, or hurt, or lonely that it only serves to make the confusion of what's happening to you that much worse. Before long it uses the instincts every human has. You eat. You eat the only thing near you that looks like it will satisfy you." Memories became screams, more than one voice joining the chorus of inhuman wailing. Hunger responded in kind, the familiar ache that he ignored most days leaving stabbing pangs behind. He could taste the copper on his tongue from past meals.

            And found the idea unsettling.

            "Then, for a little bit, the pain stops." Fingertips clapped against his palm, cracked and twisted under sudden pressure until they burst. Blood, veins, and meat clasping to bits of broken bone as his hand opened again. Turning his head ever so slightly, the razor-wire grin spreading without certainty to why. It came from hate, most assuredly, but not for her. Never for her. Nazomi sucked air through his teeth, a sharp sound as he grasped his broken hand with the other and squeezed, crushing it into useless pulp.

            "So of course the pain returns. Worse than before, clawing at thought and soul until you give in again. It gets easier each time, repeating until, and I do love our capacity for this, until it scrapes away at what we were. Until there is only the hunger and the shattered remains of what used to be human. You forget who you were because the person you were could not stand the sight of the monster you have become." There was...an admission in his words he would not have thought of if not for the question. That explained more than he cared to have it to. Shame gave to anger and anger to the inconsolable depression that had consumed him before.

            To think of how far he'd fallen just because of that.

            Another day he would have torn the wounded hand away. It was simpler to replace it than endure the discomfort of it weaving itself back into usable form. Still he chose to inflict that upon himself instead. Flakes of reishi drawn to the appendage, restoring bone, wrapping veins back where they belonged, and knitting flesh back together where it had been torn. His focus remained long enough to see it finished; noting that his unwillingness as another attachment he had not always been subject to.

            "We become new, born through the pain and the hunger, always looking for a way sate it that we might finally be rid of it. It becomes something we must fill. Some try power, some follow different paths. But in an end those efforts become as empty as we are because they accomplish nothing. Except I found an answer." A giggle. A grin. That feeling, the one that he had been missing, returned with a violent swell to remind him what it was he had doubted. His smile finally genuine again Nazomi turned to his muse with the confidence that had been missing in all but the mask he had presented. For once, he felt himself again, no longer a slave to the doubt or hesitation that had prevented him from acting for so long.

            "I have no purpose but the one I give myself, something greater that is not done for hunger or pain but because it is necessary! And you, so close to perfection, of what I seek, remind me why that is so important." What madness had been in his features slipped away, replaced by a clam too gentle to be worn by a thing such as him. He blinked, blue bleeding into the yellow of his eyes as Nazomi held his hand out with a flourish and a bow.

"You remind me that my emptiness does not need to define me."

==============================================

Word Count:1113

GP Gained: 22

Total GP: 73

She didn't pay much attention to the noise. The monster was talking, and she'd asked him to, so it was probably rude of her to let the words wash over her without listening. Her behaviour would have looked impolite to anyone watching if they'd cared to look past the blood, past casual displays of magic. She wanted the silence to stop. She wanted the screams to stop filling it and the noise that came out of his mouth was a start, a good start, but they were there in the blackness behind her eyes and words could only do so much.

Words weren't enough, and sirens drowned them.

"On your feet!"

She gradually became aware of the man in front of her several long seconds after he'd jabbed her with the butt of his gun. It came as delayed pain; a smile of recognition and fellowship before the signals of wounded flesh interrupted, curving down her smile, furrowing that perfect skin with stress lines.

It was like a whisper from afar, a mysterious dirge from foreign lands on strange winds that said rip and tear, that said this is a ghost, an imitation of the real, that said do it, do it now, do it to feel alive, that said use one scream to replace another, and that's what sold her.

That's when something coursed from her. It ripped through the concrete substitute for ground and through the man's feet, and then the rest of him, bursting in a shower of through his scalp. Nail-tipped tendrils undulated through the ruins in her hair. It left an unpleasant stain on her suit that she could probably pass off as tomato sauce. She felt nothing.

The screams were on the outside, now. People running, more cars coming, more men, more guns. She tried to smile but it felt empty. The rush she'd felt before so many times before just wasn't coming, and when she leaped onto the patrol car and commanded it to exude spikes, to vent fumes inside instead of out, to simply stand up and compact the hollow spaces. The meat-pilots, made redundant by her power, became a paste. She felt nothing.

It was a mosaic, a blur. Unreal people were reduced to parts, were broken down and the screaming didn't stop. There had been decades of this, of reduced humanity. She would make it a game, find some pleasure in the heat, the passion of eradiction and now it was grey, there was nothing living as it replayed in her mind, nothing joyous. Just the detritus of people who had been alive, that she had ended. Just them cursing her. Just her asking herself why she was doing anything and the gunfire she dodged, the hollow laugh that cracked out of her as she danced around the men pouring out of the back of the truck, thinking themselves so prepared.

She almost didn't keep dancing. Almost didn't. Slowed, faltered as the question of purpose filtered through, of doing something. She'd had that. She remembered what it felt like. The pride, the purity. And now...

A bullet. Red splattering the street. A hole through her, like him. Hissing with rage. How like him she was. How hungry. How monstrous, how starved of she-didn't-even-remember-what as she reacted like a beast, made the ground swallow the offending bag of flesh, her own flesh filling in the hole. But not the emptiness.

She should be doing something.

Be going somewhere.

Feeling something.

Not... this.

And there he was, smiling.

And there he was, laughing and clapping like he had found a soulmate, like how far she had fallen was magnificent, a thing to be treasured, like the red was some finishing touch on a masterwork of art and she just saw it, she saw what he saw. All of it, in picture-perfect clarity.

And it kind of was beautiful.

She'd never lost that beauty, even in ruin.

Like how, in a fallen castle, you can see how it once stood, filling in the blanks from one last yawning precipice of brick, from gaping holes.

But it wasn't a place she could live anymore.

There was no patching up the holes, no pretending, no just-until-tomorrows or holding out hope for people she'd forgotten (with red hair, that came sometimes in dreams), because no one was saving her.

It was too late for that.

She was what people needed saving from.

She and the monster had that in common too.

There were more coming, there'd always be more coming, and it seemed less and less like irrelevance, more and more like murder, to rip them apart. And she was one of the good people. She saved them. She flew in from the sky on wings of fire, blazing with the light of her soul, and she pushed the monsters back. She commanded them. She routed and slayed them and this was something else.

This was a decay.

This was like looking out of someone else's eyes as they left their cars and found the pieces of their friends and looked at her aghast through tears, swore vengeance, did not act because they were too afraid. She made them afraid. Because they were people, and they did not want to die.

And he was laughing, and she had made so many of them die.

There was only one place to go from here.

Out of here.

Away.

Words: 901
GP: 18 (36)

~Thread Exit~